Jackie Burkhart
Jackie Burkhart is a principal character on the FOX comedy That '70s Show. She is portrayed by Mila Kunis. Character Jackie is the self-absorbed, snobby, rich girl and girlfriend of Kelso, Hyde, and then Fez. She is introduced in the pilot episode primarily as Michael Kelso's girlfriend. She likes to give advice which often sounds typically thoughtless and superficial, but turns out to be occasionally correct. She is rich, spoiled, conceited, and irritating, and is never really invited into the circle of friends--but believes she has a VIP pass into the group because she is dating Kelso, who is a member. Despite these characteristics, Jackie is popular at school, and has been voted Most Popular and Best Legs, and was the runner-up Snow Queen. She is also something of a Chatterbox, rambling on about things that no one has any interest in. She often is shown thwarting the affinity with others in the group due to her self-absorbed persona. While she can be very manipulating, she is shown to have her serious moments and be very kind. Jackie is also known to be very insecure about herself as when she dated Hyde, every time he made a comment about another lady she immediately became insecure about herself and demanded him to call that lady ugly. After her breakup with Kelso in Season 2, Jackie keeps hanging out in Eric's basement, a sign that her status has grown. These gradual changes make her character develop a defined character arc. However, she still heavily keeps part of her valley girl persona intact and she still looks at herself as the personification of what a woman should be. Even though by the last episode she has only kissed four people on-screen, she is made to sound like a slut. In the last circle Fez tells Eric, "I have kissed Jacqueline Burkhart" to which Hyde replies, "So has everybody else", although he may just have been referring to those in the circle, even though Eric has not kissed her at all during the show run. Also in another episode Donna mentions she got a job by "tying her shirt up in one of those sexy knots", to which Hyde mentions, "Jackie does that. We never pay to get into Six Flags!" She also like to dress in revealing clothes to show off her figure. Friendships Donna Pinciotti During the first season, Jackie is in her sophomore year of high school, making her approximately 15 years old. She appoints herself Donna Pinciotti's best friend. Due to her extreme haughtiness, Jackie believes Donna is unattractive compared to herself, and also kinda boring - but as she states in numerous episodes, she believes Donna could do much better than Eric (though in the Season 7 finale, Jackie reveals that she has always cared for Eric as a friend, as Jackie calls to talk to Eric specifically for the first time ever). Despite their extremely different personalities, Donna decides to play big sister to Jackie and often tries to look out for her when she feels Jackie is making a mistake, more often than not due to her lack of common sense. Sometimes Jackie is the voice of reason for Donna, as evidenced in the Season 2 episode Kiss Of Death, the same episode in which Jackie realized that Kelso was cheating on her. After her father was sent to prison in the middle of Season 5, she moved in with Donna and the two became best friends. Eric Forman :Main page: Jackie and Eric Jackie has mostly an acquaintanceship with Eric, though she has teased a close friendship several times. Eric is the only male friend out of the core four guys Jackie has not dated/kissed. She once told Eric she considered him a best friend and nice guy and he was the first person she revealed to that she was under the impression she was pregnant. She also called Eric before he left for Africa saying she was sorry she could not be there to say good-bye in person and she always thought he was a close friend. Although she is the favorite of Red's, Eric dislikes her, and makes no attempt to hide this. They became even less fond of each other when Eric blackmailed her (for kissing the cheese guy), and Eric continued to dislike her. They did have their moments, such as when Eric convinces Jackie she is right for Kelso (ironically, they break up soon after), and when he stands up to comfort her after she ends her relationship with Kelso. Jackie, according to Eric, makes fun of "us (he and Donna), fat girls, or me". During the course of the series, Jackie becomes an integral part of the "gang" and is considered a friend in her own right, as opposed to because of who she is with. Jackie also has a friendship with Red. Early on, Red remarked she was the favorite of Eric's friends (even though she is not Eric's friend) for her ability to hold a flashlight on a car. Jackie has run crying to Mr. Foreman's arms no less than three times, all of which he objected to. Red finds Jackie as annoying as everyone else, but does sometimes takes her side in arguments. However, in light of Red's doting relationship with Laurie and his tendency to side with Donna over Eric, and also how much he cares and tries keeping Kitty happy, it could be argued that he simply has a soft spot for women. Romances Michael Kelso :Main page: Kelso and Jackie In the beginning, Jackie is dating Michael Kelso, an attractive, but dim-witted, partyboy. The two lost their virginity to each other after Kelso and his friends got out of jail for riding in a car that was mistaken for being stolen. Jackie gets on Kelso's friends' nerves on a daily basis and Kelso repeatedly said that he was going to break up with her. But Jackie beat him to it and broke up with him after catching him kissing Pam Macy. However, they got back together in the very same episode. Jackie later broke up with Kelso again after a pregnancy scare, but they got back together later at the Junior Prom. The two's relationship is somewhat of a contrast to Eric and Donna's mostly steady union. The main difference between their relationships is that Jackie and Kelso's relationship was mainly based on mutual obsession and physical attraction while Eric and Donna's relationship was based on mutual differences of ideals and sexual attraction. In Season 2, Kelso began an affair with Eric's promiscuous sister, Laurie, about which Jackie eventually found out and subsequently broke up with him again. Following his subsequent breakup with Laurie, Jackie decided to test Kelso to see if they should get back together, which they did. Kelso remained loyal to Jackie after that and stayed with her throughout Season 4. However, when Kelso began to neglect Jackie as a result of his joining a modeling agency, she was caught by Eric kissing her boss Todd. Kelso eventually found out, and went to ambush Jackie's boss. However, Jackie's boss was a blackbelt and easily beat Kelso up. This event results in a period of discovery for Jackie and Kelso; Kelso realizes he cheated because Jackie always insulted him and made him feel bad about himself. For this, he felt very insecure and angry about it but could not do a thing about it because he never wished to break a woman's heart. Although, when he had said that he was going to break up with her, he had actually meant it and was going to it, but her impulsive and demanding attitude forced him to put his plans on hold. This, combined with Jackie always insulting him, caused him to cheat on her. As a result, he broke up with her because he felt he could not be with someone who made him feel like that. It did not last, as they got back together shortly after. Then in the Season 4 finale, Jackie asked Kelso to marry her, but Kelso freaked out and left for California with Donna. When he returned in the beginning of Season 5 he found out that Jackie had moved on to Hyde, which made him extremely jealous, and he spent the majority of the season trying to get her back. By the beginning of Season 6 however, Kelso had claimed to be over Jackie and was fine with just being friends with her. At the end of Season 7 however, Kelso drives Jackie to Chicago after her break-up with Hyde. He is later seen entering Jackie's hotel room in only a towel, making a comment implying he and Jackie were about to sleep together. Hyde soon shows up, however, and Kelso ran off nude. In Season 8, he considered marrying Jackie, claiming that he did still love her, before he was offered a job in Chicago, but Fez had already told her about his proposal, which made him feel he should do so, but she turned him down when he asked at Red and Kitty's anniversary, much to his own pleasure. Steven Hyde :Main page: Jackie and Hyde Jackie and Steven Hyde were, from the beginning of the show, polar opposites and even enemies. While Jackie was girly, rich, and shallow, Hyde was lower in social class and a rebel in the group. They strongly disliked each other during the first seasons, but Hyde began helping Jackie after her break-up with Kelso in Season 2. This eventually led to a phase in which Jackie was infatuated with Hyde, but her feelings gradually faded and it was not until Season 5, when Kelso was in California, that their romance really began. After watching too much of The Price is Right, the two began making out. At first they did not want to admit that they were dating, but finally gave in. They dated for the most part of Season 5, but Hyde's jealousy caused him to cheat and they broke up. Jackie's relationship with Hyde caused her to be less self-absorbed, making her more likable to the rest of the gang, and caused them to truly consider her a part of the group. At the beginning of Season 6, Kelso and Hyde were in competition to get Jackie back, because they both still loved her. She decided she needs time to think about it, and left them both hanging, but chose Hyde in the end. Their relationship went on for two more seasons, until Jackie was offered a job in Chicago. She went to Hyde and told him that she would stay if he gave her any indication they would eventually get married. Hyde did not have an answer, but when he did, she was already gone. Or so he thought. Jackie had no way out of Point Place, so in one last attempt to get an answer out of the man she said "meant everything in the world to her", she went over to the basement. Hiding his hurt and anger that she had "left" him, Hyde told her to have a good trip. But merely an episode later, Hyde had decided he was going to get her back. He hit a snag, however: during his conversation with Jackie, Kelso walked into the hotel room with a towel around his waist and a bucket of ice in his hands, making a comment that implied he and Jackie were about to have sex. Although Kelso frequently makes sexual comments to every female on the show, including Jackie and Donna, Hyde believed the two really were about to engage in sex, and drove off to Las Vegas. When he came back to Point Place, in the first episode of season 8 he discovered he had married a stripper, Samantha, which effectively ended his and Jackie's relationship. They still remained close friends, but their friendship resembled their frenemy relationship seen in the first two seasons as Hyde would often tease her and talk down on their past romance. This behavior resembled their animosity in the first two seasons and completely disregarded the character and relationship growth these two had gone through. Throughout Season 8, Jackie remained single. Kelso proposed to her. While she admitted she loved and thought of Kelso as her soulmate, she refused. At the end of the season, Jackie realized Fez had all the qualities she was looking for in a man and they kiss in the finale. But at first when Jackie realized she loved him he said no to her because he thought it only would last for a week and then she would go to another guy. The words he said were "I don't want to be your sloppy third". And the episode after that, Andrew came from the north side of the same island as Fez and he decided to move back to his home country, so as to never have to see Jackie again. Despite this, they get together in the second to last episode of Season 8, but they did not kiss until the last episode, atop the water tower. Trivia * Jackie's portrayer, Mila Kunis, has laughed/smiled the most than any other portrayer in the series, thus breaking the fourth wall in that aspect the most. *Jackie's dream is to move to Dallas, Texas. One time, she said she wanted to become a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys, and another time, she tries to convince Donna to go to Dallas with her and become a weather girl. However, in another episode, she claims she dislikes Texans (or any part of the south). *Jackie's grandmother is 92 as of 1978, and Michael kept shooting her with a water pistol because "She had jam on her face!" *Jackie is the only teenager (other than Randy) to not be called by her last name. (Forman, Hyde, Kelso, sometimes even Pinciotti). Coincidentally, Jackie is the only teenager to call everyone by their first name, no matter what. *In the episode Career Day, Red claims that Jackie is his favorite one of Eric's friends after she demonstrates her skills at holding a flashlight and helping him work on the car, despite Eric pointing out that they are not friends. Conversely, in another episode, Jackie didn't bother to help with Red's muffler shop. Instead, she just stood around saying "Eww... grease". *Jackie loves disco music and keeps up with the fashions of the late 70s, and presumably 80s after the main story of the show. She seems to be a fan of ABBA. She also listens to Peter Frampton and Todd Rundgren. She has the 45 of "Hello, It's Me". * Jackie's phone number is 412-5736. This is the number Kelso was dialing on the phone when he was in jail, asking for help. ("Stolen Car") *Jackie appeared in all 200 episodes. *Jackie's character is named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She is also partially named after her father, Jack Burkhart, having the feminine version of his name. *In the Halloween episode where her middle name is mentioned, Beulah, she would become very angry whenever it was said. However, at the start of a season (and subsequent seasons), one episode where the audience comes in midway through an argument about who could beat up the other (Bruce Lee or The Fonz), her shirt says "JSB". It is not stated whether it is her initials or not, but it could possibly be a cover-up to what her real middle name is. *In the Season 8 episode, "Somebody To Love", while Jackie is making a speech at the bar because a boy turned her down, the strap for her dress on her right shoulder comes off and unknowingly to her, her right "boob" is seen by all in the room (Drunk, she asks "What's a Boobsout?" when Donna tells her about her exposure). *Jackie has a stuffed unicorn named Fluffycakes. It was a gift from Kelso after they had sex for the first time after Kelso did not call her for a week, using the excuse that his family was "having their phones cleaned". In reality, he did not call because he was thinking about breaking up with her. That was not shown at the time but they talk about it in the Season 5 episode "Whole Lotta Love". In that episode Jackie is appalled after learning the truth and exclaims that "Fluffycakes is tainted?". In Season 8, Donna refers to it as "Mr. Fluffycakes". Jackie, angry over Hyde's sudden marriage to Samantha, promptly rips it in two. *Jackie has been shown to have coulrophobia, an irrational fear of clowns. In the Season 8 episode "Fun It", the group decides to steal the Fatso Burger mascot, a giant clown. While the rest of the group enthusiastically participates in the theft, Jackie adamantly refuses and states when asked about her fear, that it stems from her seventh birthday party when a clown squirted her with water from a faux flower, frightened her with a never-ending string of handkerchiefs produced from his pocket, and she walked in on him making out with her mother. At the end of the episode, as they are returning the clown to the restaurant, Fez is forced to make out with the clown to fool a police cruiser that was driving by. Jackie claims that seeing this has made clowns seem less threatening to her, and seems to have confronted her fear, but Donna quickly dashes that allusion by telling her it is just a friendly clown that can kill her, to which she screams and runs away from the clown. During the end credits, Jackie is seen in bed, covered in a red substance, which she discovers to be ketchup, and she looks next to her and sees the severed head of the clown laying next to her. This is an obvious allusion to the 1972 movie The Godfather, where the character played by John Marley, Jack Woltz, wakes up next to the severed head of his prized racehorse after refusing to do a favor for Don Corleone. She seems to wake up, and attempts to grab a handkerchief, but they all come out of the box in a constant chain, to which she screams as the credits end. *In the episode "Grandma's Dead", Jackie is seen holding a pillow that resembles the flower seen in the Season 1 original scene transitions *The only core male teenager throughout the series whom Jackie has never had a romantic relationship with is Eric. Their hostile nature towards one another is pointed out sporadically throughout the series. When Eric leaves for Africa, he is genuinely shocked that for the first time ever, Jackie calls the house specifically to speak to Eric, stating she always considered him a close friend. *Despite popular belief, Jackie's eye color is said to be brown, unlike Mila Kunis who has a rare condition called heterochromia iridum, meaning one of her eyes is hazel and the other green. *Jackie was born in September of 1961: she states in Career Day (Early to Mid February of 1977), that she is a sophomore, not a junior. Which would make her 15-16 years old, she celebrates her birthday in a Season 5 episode at least two months before Thanksgiving of 1978. Thus her birthday is in September 1961/2. Which would also make her the youngest of the group. *Jackie knew Eric and his family the rest of the gang in 1968 when Kelso plays doctor with her. Photos :Jackie Burkhart/Gallery Category:Characters Category:Main Characters Category:Female Characters